An exploration of the relationship between nursing students' learning style and success in biosicence education: An integrative review of the literature

Background - This study explores the concept of learning styles and discusses the importance of pedagogical strategies that may influence the academic achievement of nursing students in their learning of bioscience and pathophysiology concepts. Bioscience and pathophysiology concepts are arguably a cornerstone of nursing practice (smales, 2010). Consequently knowledge comprehension presents a challenge when nursing students’ report experiencing difficulties in the amalgamation and integration of bioscience education with clinical situations (Smales, 2010). These difficulties include the academics teaching perspective, the learning environment, pre-existing knowledge, content delivery style and curriculum time. Miller et al., (2008), suggest that educational research in nursing should focus not on the volume of bioscience content learnt but should instead detail the mechanisms through which the student learnt the bioscience content. Therefore nursing educators may need to focus on the learning style and study strategies that nursing students employ and evaluate if these learning styles influence the students unit success. Aim(s) and research questions - To review the interaction between learning style as an indicator of nursing student study methodology and correlate if learning style and associated strategy influence academic success in the bioscience units. Research methodology - The literature review utilised an inductive approach allow themes from the literature to emerge. The search process utilised several databases, namely CINAHL, ERIC, Science Direct, Web of science, and ProQuest for various types of research papers related to the field of nursing bioscience education. After the duplicates were removed the citations of the included papers were also manually reviewed to ascertain literature relevant to the study. These papers were subjected to a critical appraisal utilising the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist which resulted in 41 papers being included in the review. Key findings and recommendations - Nursing academics are more aware of individual student differences, but how this manifests or influences learning style, and how learning style results in student success, have not been correlated or adequately integrated into a teaching program in the bioscience units of the nursing programme. Evaluation of nursing students learning style may provide valuable insight into whether the current teaching mode employed in tertiary education facilities are appropriate, or if academics need to address teaching and curricular development from a more holistic angle. References Cegielski, C., Hazen, B., & Rainer, R. (2011). Teach them how they learn: Learning styles and information systems education. Journal of Information Systems Education, 22(2), 135. Retrieved from http://jise.org/ Hung, Y. (2012). The effect of teaching methods and learning style on learning program design in web-based education systems. Journal of Educational Computing Research,47(4), 409-427. doi:10.2190/EC.47.4.d Miller, E. (2010). Medical terminology confuses patients--and nursing staff. Nursing Standard, 25(3), 29-30. Retrieved from http://www.nursing-standard.co.uk/ Smales, K. (2010). Learning and applying bioscience to clinical practice in nursing. Nursing Standard, 21(33). 35-39. Retrieved from http://www.nursing-standard.co.uk/ Threeton, M. D., Walter, R. A., & Evanoski, D. C. (2013). Personality type and learning style: The tie that binds. Career and Technical Education Research, 38(1), 39-55. doi:10.5328/cter38.1.39 3 key points to indicate how your work contributes to knowledge development within the selected theme • Learning style literature has been heavily critiqued but can be readily accepted as being influential on student learning despite its limited integration into nursing education (Kyprianidou et al, 2012: Threeton et al., 2013). • There is a relationship between teaching and learning methods and when they are synchronous the outcome may be an improvement in nursing student academic performance (Cegielski et al., 2011: Hung 2013: Threeton et al., 2013). • These findings have the potential to guide teaching strategies to ensure a more conducive and effective teaching and learning environment in the bioscience education of nurses